


A Glass Half-Something

by TheAshla (cannedpeaches)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Hera loves him anyway, Humor, Kanan is an idiot, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Rated M Just To Be Safe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 11:34:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12911076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cannedpeaches/pseuds/TheAshla
Summary: Back in the day, Kanan made a lot of stupid mistakes. Hera finds out about one of them.





	A Glass Half-Something

**Author's Note:**

  * For [subtropicalStenella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/gifts).
  * Inspired by [BadassLongcoat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424509) by [subtropicalStenella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella). 



> Inspired by [subtropicalStenella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella)'s amazing fic, ["BadassLongcoat,"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12424509) in which Kanan has a very ill-advised nipple ring. I asked her if I could write a riff off that idea, and this is the result. It would up having more plot and feels than I intended, but is anyone really surprised by that?

Kanan Jarrus was not a heavy sleeper. He hadn’t been since he was a youngling who answered to the name Caleb Dume and lived safely within the walls of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Being sent to the frontlines of the Clone Wars at age thirteen, then living on the run after Order 66, tended to make people permanently jumpy, even when they were resting.

 

But as Kanan slowly rose into consciousness from the deepest sleep he’d had in years, he didn’t feel fear or panic--just an overwhelming sense of comfort and warmth. His eyes closed, he enjoyed the sensation of delicate fingers carding through his long, loose hair, sending pleasant tingles across his scalp and down his spine. He was lying on his stomach, which only made the heat pooling in his gut more noticeable. As those fingers picked through minor snarls, images floated up in his memory: soft green skin touched with scars; lekku dangling from a head thrown back; large, heavy-lidded green eyes meeting his in the aftermath of orgasm. He shivered remembering them.

 

 _So_ , he thought with a mixture of amusement and relief, _she stayed the night_.

 

He stopped feigning sleep, opening his eyes to look into the face of Hera Syndulla. Sleep had softened her already graceful features. Her brow wasn’t tense like it usually was, and her full lips curved into a smile. She was still naked, lying on her side with her arm pillowed under her head, her fingers combing through his hair. Looking at her like this, Kanan’s heart filled so suddenly he thought it would burst.

 

“Good morning,” he murmured.

 

“Good morning, love,” she said in that magical voice of hers. The hand in his hair drifted down to his cheek, and he turned his head to kiss her palm. She laughed as his beard dragged across her skin.

 

“Sleep alright?”

 

“Mm. A bit cramped, but I’ll live.” Her fingers brushed his bicep, tracing along a thick line of raised scar tissue.

 

“Blaster bolt,” he offered without her asking. “I saw you have one, too…” He skimmed his hand along the twisted scar on her ribs, making her wrinkle her nose.

 

“Not the most fun injury I’ve ever had,” she said.

 

“Oh? Did I give you any fun ones last night?” He waggled his eyebrows, making her laugh again as she smacked his shoulder.

 

As she ran her hand over his back, he catalogued for her the various marks he’d gained from other blasters, from shrapnel, from dirty bar fights that made him embarrassed to think about now. When she reached his lower back, though, she paused. Sitting up straighter, she squinted at the area just above his asscrack.

 

“What?” Kanan asked. Panic rose in his chest.

 

“Kanan,” she said, “what is _that_?”

 

She sat upright on the bunk now, folding her arms over her chest and glaring down at his body. Kanan only had to wrack his brain for a second before he mashed his face into the bunk and groaned.

 

He knew exactly what she was looking at, although most of the time he forgot it was there. Based on the last time he’d looked at it in a mirror, he knew that it currently resembled a lopsided blob, but if you squinted at it just right, it resolved itself into what it was supposed to be: a pinup of a Twi’lek woman straddling a proton torpedo, similar to the ones that had been painted on Republic ships during the Clone Wars. And the Twi’lek, of course, was almost the exact same shade of green as Hera.

 

“Uh,” Kanan said. His mouth had gone dry.

 

“Is that--is that a _Twi’lek_?”

 

Kanan sat up to face her, keeping his back completely out of her view. He held up his hands defensively as Hera continued to glare. “I got this years ago,” he said, panic gripping at his throat. “I don’t even remember getting it!”

 

“Because that makes it better,” Hera snapped.

 

“If I’d been sober at the time I wouldn’t have--”

 

“Do you really wanna finish that sentence?” Hera’s voice rose with the color in her cheeks.

 

“--gotten it! I know it’s disrespectful and--”

 

“Do you know what kind of people _do_ these tattoos in the first place?”

 

“--I’ve regretted it ever since!”

 

“If I’d seen it last night I would have--”

 

“Hera, I know.”

 

“--fucking kneed you in the balls before I ever--”

 

“I’m sorry!”

 

“--thought even once about sleeping with you!”

 

Hera lunged for him, and for a moment, Kanan thought he was about to get the beating of his life. He ducked and put his arms over his head, but all Hera did was grab his shoulder to vault over him and out of his bunk. She didn’t look at him as she snatched up her scattered clothing, her lekku tense and twisted, and left the cabin. As the door hissed shut, Kanan flopped back down on his bunk with a heavy sigh, cursing every sip of alcohol he’d ever had.

  


 

 

“Another?” the bartender asked.

 

Kanan held up his empty glass and inspected it, scrubbing his other hand over the thick stubble he was starting to grow on his chin. He still hadn’t decided how long he wanted his beard to be.

 

“Why not?” he said, shrugging. He watched as the bartender poured several fingers of cheap Corellian whiskey into the glass. It would burn horribly on the way down, but after a year of being legal in most parts of the Outer Rim, he’d learned well enough that credits disappeared faster than he could get drunk if he was downing the fancy shit.

 

Kanan idly swirled his drink on the bar as he surreptitiously glanced around. Not for the first time that night, he pursed his lips in mild irritation. As far as he could tell, there was only one bad thing about the way he lived: Sometimes, he ended up on worlds so backwater that evidently, there weren’t any girls.

 

He was startled out of his thoughts by a large hand clapping him on the shoulder. He turned on his stool to see a burly Togruta grinning at him.

 

“Why the long face, my friend?” the Togruta said.

 

Kanan had to tear his eyes away from the other man’s sharp teeth before replying. “No reason,” he said, trying to keep his expression neutral.

 

The Togruta shook his head. “Oh, there’s a reason. But I’m not one to pry. Buy you a drink?”

 

Kanan opened his mouth to say no, then thought about how long it had been since he’d last had a job. And he probably wouldn’t have another for the next week--dust storms on the mining side of the planet were delaying all of the off-world shipments, and the bad weather wouldn’t subside for days. Kanan hated few things more than being idle, and with no cargo to haul, that’s just what he had been. _Screw it._

 

“Fine,” Kanan said finally. “Thanks,” he added.

 

The Togruta gestured to the bartender, who seemed to know him, before he settled in on the stool next to Kanan and held out his hand. “Zabo,” he said.

 

“Kanan.” He gripped the other man’s forearm and gave him a small nod. “So, what do you do around these parts that you can take pity on a stranger?”

 

“Oh, this and that,” Zabo said as the bartender put double whiskeys down in front of him and Kanan.

 

He didn’t say anything more, and Kanan had to stop himself from smirking. _Smuggler, then._

 

“And you?” Zabo asked.

 

“This and that,” Kanan said, no longer trying to keep himself from smiling. “But right now I’m held up by the dust storms.”

 

“They blew in two days ago,” Zabo acknowledged. “It’ll be at least another two before they pass.”

 

“Blew in right when I did.” Kanan threw the drink back, and before he could ask, the bartender had poured him another. His throat felt raw, but his stomach was warm and the room was becoming pleasantly hazy.

 

“You must be bad luck,” Zabo said, his voice full of humor.

 

Kanan snorted. “Yeah, that’s me. Bad luck charm.” Was his voice more bitter than he intended? Sometimes Corellian whiskey made him a little mean. He downed his new drink.

 

“Don’t say that,” Zabo said. “You’re as lucky as anybody. Come on, I’ll prove it to you.”

 

“How are you gonna do that?”

 

Zabo stood and indicated a round table in the corner where three other men were playing cards. “My friends,” he said. “Join us for a round of sabacc?”

 

Kanan frowned. The markings on Zabo’s lekku were writhing like snakes in his vision. “I dunno…”

 

“Just a round,” Zabo said, putting a hand on Kanan’s back and steering him toward the table.

 

“Fine, fine,” Kanan muttered, letting himself be pushed toward the group.

 

“Two pitchers of Ebla, please!” Zabo called back to the bartender.

 

Kanan plunked down in an empty chair next to a dark-skinned human, and Zabo slid onto a bench, where a skinny Rodian was already sitting.

 

“Are we interrupting a game?” Zabo asked.

 

The human shook his head. “Just about to hand Pibb’s ass to him.”

 

The Rodian’s large eyes narrowed. He threw his cards down on the table. “What do you have?” he demanded.

 

The human gave a wan smile and revealed his hand. Zabo whistled. Pibb only sat back on the bench and folded his arms as the human gathered up the cards and began to shuffle, chuckling softly to himself.

 

The beer arrived as the human, whose name was Set, started dealing. Zabo poured Kanan a glass and pushed it toward him.

 

“I really shouldn’t,” Kanan said, eyeing the condensation that began to gather on the outside of the glass.

 

“Please,” said Zabo, pushing the drink even closer to him. “It’s not sabacc without a little liquid courage to help the betting.”

 

Kanan said nothing, but took a gulp of the Ebla. Zabo smiled.

 

“Bets in,” Pibb said. The metallic clatter of credits cut through the low hum of voices in the cantina, and Kanan vaguely noticed a small crowd of spectators forming around the table. He tried to ignore them.

 

Kanan was pretty good at sabacc, at least in his estimation, but he’d never played with anyone as serious about the game as this group was. Each man studied his cards carefully before making a decision, and Pibb had sucked his lips so far into his mouth that it looked like a badly installed compressor hose. Kanan hiccuped a laugh. Zabo looked up at him, then around the table, before he showed his hand.

 

The rest of the men, including Kanan, groaned and turned their cards over with disgust. Zabo showed his toothy grin as he swept all the credits toward his corner of the table. Kanan looked at the coins with longing. He had nowhere to sleep tonight except, possibly, the floor of a storage closet in the back of the cantina. The now-uninhibited part of his brain roared in frustration.

 

“Another?” Zabo asked.

 

Before Kanan could stop himself, he said, “I’m in,” and chugged the rest of his beer. The crowd cheered, and one of them must have run up to the bartender for another pitcher, because a new one appeared soon after.

 

When Kanan looked back on this night, like so many other nights from his lost years, he would not remember exactly how much he’d drunk, how many rounds of sabacc he’d played, or how many credits he’d lost--but he remembered snippets. Vividly.

 

Like this night when, sometime after he’d run out of credits but before he realized the men he was playing with were card sharks taking advantage of a drunk nineteen-year-old (and the bartender was probably in on it, too), he pounded his fist on the table and said, “Come on! Another round!”

 

Zabo laughed at him. “You’ve nothing left,” he said.

 

Kanan could hear his pulse in his ears over the now raucous crowd watching them. The room was spinning. “Name your bet,” he said.

 

Set quirked an eyebrow at him. “I have an idea,” Set said, waving his two friends toward him. He began speaking in a low voice.

 

“What?” Kanan demanded, yelling over the din. Zabo was grinning again, Pibb was laughing, and Set was actually smiling.

 

“We’ve got a friend who’s looking to start a business, go into a trade,” Set said slowly. “And he needs someone to practice on.”

 

Kanan heaved himself out of his chair, affronted. “Hey, listen,” he slurred, “I’m not just gonna fuck any old--”

 

“Not _that_ kind of business!” Pibb snapped.

 

“Oh,” said Kanan, sitting back down again with a heavy _thump_. “Well then what?”

 

“He’s an artist,” Zabo said.

 

“He does tattoos,” Pibb said.

 

“Pfft,” Kanan said. “That sure sounds better than the other thing.”

 

“So are you in?” Set asked. “You win, you get the whole pot. One of us wins, you get some new ink.”

 

Kanan was usually pretty good at calculating odds, but when he was this intoxicated, all bets were off.

 

“You got a deal,” he said.

 

Kanan would only remember bits and pieces after that: an alley down a side-street, the buzz of some industrial-looking machine, the sound of Zabo’s laughter echoing off duracrete walls...

 

When he woke up the next morning, Kanan had to peel his face off the sticky floor of the cantina’s back room. His head was pounding, and when he sat up, he felt a dull pain at the small of his back. When he gingerly pressed his hand to the area, he swore at the sharpened sensation. He used the shelf next to him to haul himself to his feet, and then shambled his way toward the refresher. Just outside the door, the bartender was mopping the floor.

 

“Still alive, I see,” said the older woman. Her voice was gruff.

 

“Yay,” Kanan deadpanned. “Listen, I’m a little fuzzy on the details of what happened last night…”

 

The bartender just shrugged. “You left with some guys. A few hours later, you were banging on the door, yelling and raising hell, and you wouldn’t quit until I let you in. Went straight back and passed out on the floor.”

 

Kanan gritted his teeth, trying to rein in his impatience. “And that’s it?”

 

“That’s it,” she said.

 

“Great.”

 

He had to use the sleeve of his sweater to clean off the bathroom mirror. When he turned around and lifted up his shirt, it took him a minute to spot it, then another minute of squinting to realize what it was. He groaned.

 

“Well, shit,” he said.

  


 

 

After meditating failed to help at all, Kanan hoped that a shower would clear his head. When he got out of the ’fresher, though, shame still squirmed in his stomach. The rational, adult part of him knew he had to talk to Hera, but it was battling with the part of him that wanted to hide in his cabin forever. Kanan scrubbed at his wet hair with his towel, cursing under his breath.

 

“Just had to fall in love with a Twi’lek, didn’t you, Jarrus?” he muttered. Then he paused. _More like, just had to be a giant useless waste of space when you were younger. Fuck._

 

Kanan threw his towel on the floor, pulled on a clean pair of boxers and his sleeping pants, and made his way toward the common room, padding as quietly as he could. When he stuck his head in, Hera was sitting at the dejarik table and frowning at her datapad. She was still in the tank top and shorts she slept in, and she’d put her feet up on the table, revealing the smooth skin of her legs. Kanan gulped.

 

“Hera?” he said. He was technically still standing in the hallway, only leaning his head and shoulders around the doorframe.

 

“Yes?” Hera said coolly, not looking up from the datapad.

 

Kanan winced. “Hera, I’m really sorry.” Her lekku tightened, and the motion reminded him of an animal raising its hackles. “I know why the tattoo is upsetting to you, and if I could somehow just...go back five years and _not_ get it, I would. And I should have told you about it before… You know.” He cleared his throat.

 

At that, Hera looked up at him, her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed. Her gaze made Kanan flinch a little, but he forced himself to take a few steps toward her, coming to a stop just inside the room.

 

He took a deep breath to steel himself, then said, “Hera, when you met me, I was a giant fuck-up, and I still am, but you still let me on your ship and you’ve given me more of your time and attention than I ever expected, and last night was-- Well, it was amazing, and not just because of-- I’ve never met anyone like you, and I just-- I really love you, Hera.” He ran a hand through his damp hair and stared at the floor, wishing very much that it would swallow him up. “Look,” he said at the ground, “I don’t deserve you, and I prove that all the time, but I’d never intentionally hurt you, and I hope you know that.”

 

He was about to say more, but a pair of green feet had appeared in his line of sight. He looked up, startled, into Hera’s face. Affection battled with irritation in her expression, and Kanan’s knees wobbled a bit.

 

“I know, love,” she said, her voice melodious but quiet.

 

“I’m sorry,” Kanan whispered.

 

Hera put her hand on his cheek. “I know that, too.”

 

He grabbed her hand in both of his own and pressed it to his heart. A half-formed thought escaped him: “I wish… I wish I’d known you earlier.”

 

She cocked her head at him, puzzled.

 

He scrambled to explain. “Because then maybe I wouldn’t be such a-- a--”

 

Hera took his chin in the thin fingers of her other hand and tilted her head up to kiss him. By the time she pulled away, Kanan was light-headed. She shook her head at him.

 

“What?” he said.

 

“You’re such a nerf-hearder,” she said. She was almost smiling.

 

“Yes,” he said seriously, “I am.”

 

Hera laughed, and the fist that had been around his heart unclenched in relief.

 

“You can always get the damn thing lasered off,” she said. “Or covered up.”

 

“Yeah, I’ll definitely do that with my extra stockpile of credits,” Kanan said.

 

“Complaining about your pay again?”

 

He stood up straight and drew his brows together. “Captain, I would never.”

 

Hera gave him a light whack on the arm. “Alright, you,” she said, stepping away from him. “I made some caf. We’ve got a new mission.”

  


 

 

Kanan was just stepping into his cabin when Hera caught him in the hallway.

 

“Where have you been?” she asked. Her tone was light, but he heard the note of curiosity in it.

 

“Just had some errands to run,” he said.

 

“Alright, love,” she said, resting her hand briefly on his lower back as she started toward the cockpit.

 

At her touch, Kanan hissed.

 

Hera whipped back around. “Kanan? Are you hurt?”

 

Kanan felt the heat rising in his cheeks. “No, no, I’m fine.”

 

Hera crossed her arms. “I know _that_ tone. What is it?”

 

It had always been useless to keep secrets from Hera. Kanan sighed and waved her into his room. When the door shut behind him, he said, “I wanted it to be a surprise, but I guess you would have noticed sooner rather than later.” He turned around and picked up the back of his shirt, then pulled the bandage off his lower back.

 

Hera bent close to him, but for many long moments, she said nothing.

 

“Hera?” Kanan asked. He looked over his shoulder at her. She was frozen. His hands were already shaking from the residual adrenaline, and the panic rising in him wasn’t helping. “Sabine drew it for me. I took it in to this guy I’d heard about in Capital City. It’s uh, it’s Sabine’s firebird. But with--”

 

“My lekku markings,” Hera murmured. She looked up at him, but he couldn’t read her expression.

 

“Yeah,” he said, his voice sounding strangled even to him. “You know, because a few years ago, you said I should cover it up, and I finally saved up enough and thought of something to actually cover it up with so--”

 

Before he could finish, Hera spun him around, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him so hard their teeth clacked. After a second of shock, Kanan responded with enthusiasm.

 

When they parted to catch their breath, Hera said, “Kanan Jarrus, you are by far the stupidest human I’ve ever met.”

 

“But you love me, right?” Kanan said, an edge of desperation to the question.

 

Hera gave him a devilish half-smile that went straight to his groin. “Yes,” she said, “I do love you. Now take off your clothes.”

 

Kanan grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”

**Author's Note:**

> [subtropicalStenella](https://archiveofourown.org/users/subtropicalStenella/pseuds/subtropicalStenella) is one of my favorite authors on AO3 for Kanera in general, but she does a particularly amazing job of writing young, post-Gorse Kanan (whom I've affectionately nicknamed "Dirtbag Kanan"). Be sure to check out her work!
> 
> I co-run a [podcast](https://twitter.com/bookwarspod) analyzing the _Star Wars_ novels, and you should definitely check it out.


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